When I wrote my 'first impressions' post thinking that I would go on immediately to a unit-by-unit evaluation.  However, after more thought and reading the reactions and views of others it struck me that there is more to discuss at a higher meta-level before going on to the nitty-gritty.

In particular, I want to look at possible negatives in the new list, those aspects that might lead one to conclude things were better left unchanged.  However, at this point don't take such things as final judgments -- I'm pointing them out so that I can see if I can disprove them or show that what was gained makes up for it here or while going through the unit-by-unit survey later on.

#1 -- Units are Now More Expensive:  There are a couple of new unit costs that at first glance make you wonder what the designers were thinking.  However, how well does that work out overall?  Fortunately, there is an easy starting point for this -- comparing old and new prices.

Looking at this list one can make the argument that the models are overall more expensive, but there are certainly ways to mitigate if not reverse the trend.  Likewise, when it comes to points it doesn't matter if you are forced to spend more to get more -- the bang for your buck comes out the same.

More important to my mind is exactly what has been raised the most in price.  The best example is the Carnifex -- at a minimum of 160 gone are the old 115 (or less) point beasts.  For some army designs that's huge, especially given how you clearly got a lot more for less with the old codex.  Take my favorite Carny load out -- Twin-linked Devourers and Venom Cannon.  The base cost with that in the last book was 130.  Now it's 200!  Since I usually took two that's the equivalent of losing ~8 genestealers or ~24 termagants.  Not a huge amount, but certainly enough to possibly swing a game.

The end result is that what were once "standard" designs for a particular player are going to need a lot of revision (get used to hearing that).

#2 -- Where are the New Army Designs?  Yes, there are more units to pick from so technically there are more army designs out there, but I'm not talking about subtle distinctions between taking two units of Hive Guard as opposed to two units of Zoanthropes.  Basically, what are the fundamental designs that are available -- and, have the old ones that were already there been improved?

The one undeniable new design is the Drop Spore Tyranid army.  You certainly couldn't do that before.  Likewise, the Mycetic Spores themselves are fairly nifty what with their base cost being a reasonable 40 points and having access to an array of different weapons.  However, this new design isn't quite as nice as it first sounds.

When it comes to most "Deep Strike" armies (most notably Space Marines) you benefit from special assault rules which allow you to bring in your units faster and in unison more than what would otherwise be normal.  Not so with a Tyranid Spore force -- it uses just the plain old reserve rules.  Take a gander at this chart:

There is a gigantic difference early on when it comes to how fast your units will drop in.  It evens out by turn four, but that's not really the point -- the great limitation of any "deep strike" army is that your men will arrive piecemeal, thereby allowing the bad guys to destroy each in turn.  Special "Drop Pod Assault" like rules go a long way to mitigate the danger.  This is not just because you start coming in earlier, but also because you are guaranteed of showing up with a full half your army that first turn.  By comparison, the bug "Spore Pod Assault" is entirely up to chance -- the totals I give here are just averages.  That means that the possible results for Tyranids are going to be more variable toward the negative -- e.g. it can only be worse than the same roles if you played Space Marines.  While this doesn't somehow ruin the "Spore Pod" option it does give you pause as it's hard to be confident that a few bad die roles won't produce disaster.

Another new possibility is a flying force, but the absence of any way to have flying troop choices pretty much sours the design.  Without that the best you can do is a half-and-half force of flyers and runners who aren't going to be able to support each other very well unless the flyers hold back -- and in that case why spend the extra points when legging it to the enemy will do?  Why couldn't GW have come up with a way to take flyers as troops, their cost and fragility balancing their speed?  Is that really so hard to balance out?

Beyond those two you have the same old basic designs -- Nidzilla, horde, genestealer cadre, and shooty bugs.  I would argue that none of them have been clearly improved.

The Nidzilla army still faces the same main issue as before, namely that the army list doesn't really allow for it except by using cheesy ratios of big specials against puny troop choices.  The loss of protection from Instant Death for synapse now makes mid-range units -- those with 4 or 5 toughness -- you might otherwise use to flesh out the force more vulnerable to heavy weapons.  On the flip side being able to take Carnifexes in groups of threes is as much a problem as a benefit considering they must all be clones and all attack/charge the same targets.

Given the popularity of Nidzilla armies why O why didn't GW take this chance to allow them in a more elegant fashion -- say, with a special character that would allow Carnifexes to be taken as troops (while otherwise putting in new factors to preserve balance)?

The horde really hasn't changed much.  'Gaunts are still as much cannon fodder as before and therefore dependent on other, beefier units to get them real punch.  Yes, the Tervigon/termagant force is cool, but the higher cost of warriors and less effectiveness of 'stealers makes your old designs notably less attractive.

Speaking of which, Genestealer armies just don't work anymore.  Without the ability to take 4+ saves 'stealers will now melt in the face of the ubiquitous AP 5 infantry weapon and with wimpier Rending they won't do as much damage when they get into close-combat.  I won't go quite as far as to suggest this design has been "nerfed" but it is close.

As for the Shooty Bugs design...

#3 -- Where are the AP 3 (or Better) Weapons?  There are a grand total of two -- yes, just two -- weapons that are Power Armor killers.  The first is the 12" Carnifex Bio-Plasma (why is the 'Fex shooting with something like that anyway?) and the old standard Warp Blast.  Not even the new Hive Guard with their uber-weapons can beat AP 4.  Since 'Nids haven't been big on the big guns anyway I suppose this is to be expected, yet at the same time this oversight has some serious consequences.

Power Armor is the suit of choice in the 41st millennium.  Thus, the ability to credibly ignore it is fairly important when it comes to army design, if only because it forces your opponent to not take his saving throws for granted.  For example, a bunch of Necrons facing Imperial Guard with plasma guns will hesitate just to run down the middle of the board.  When facing Tyranids, however, that same player can do so with confidence -- and if you trot some Zoanthropes he knows where to concentrate his heavy firepower, especially since they can now be one-shot wonders when facing strength 8+ weapons.

Nothing is a better predictor of survival than a good armor save because when it works nothing mitigates it.  Unlike toughness whose effectiveness is on a sliding curve, 3+ armor will save you 66% of the time whether the strength of the weapon is 2 or 10.  This, for Tyranids that means that 2/3 of your shooting attacks (minus the two exceptions above) are guaranteed to fail when facing power armor.  The only way to overcome this is with mass fire, yet for bugs that means getting within 12" -- and won't you want to be charging into combat at those ranges anyway?  So much for the shooty force.

(Yes, you could always face Imperial Guards or Orks, but are you honestly going to design an army that plays in almost completely different ways depending on whether you are facing power armor?)

#4 -- Why is Everything Changed?  This is more a nitpick for veteran players than a direct criticism of the new book.  If you compare the old bio-morphs to the new ones you find that nearly all may have the same names, but their rules are quite different.  If you've gone to the trouble of modeling all those bugs with just this or that combination of bio-morphs it is quite likely you are going to find yourself wishing you could magically switch them out with something else.  Fortunately, most opponents won't be so crass as to stick you on this, so you can just "fake it" without facing changing all those models, but still it is annoying that often the new morphs are so different from the old ones.

#5 -- Why So Many Elites?  I mentioned this in previous posts -- the army list has way too many elite choices compared to the force as a whole.  Many are quite good and the rest of decent, but I suspect that some will seldom if ever be played just because it will make too much sense to spend those Elite points on the better unit.  At the very least Zoanthropes should have stayed Heavy Support.

I warned you this would be fairly negative in tone, but don't (yet, at least) think that means I am dismissing the new book as a whole.  Let's go through the units one-by-one as see what we can make work.

More to come...

Posted on: 1/25/2010 at 9:41 PM
Categories: Reviews
Actions: E-mail | Kick it! | DZone it! | del.icio.us
Post Information: Permalink | Comments (4) | Post RSS